I myself have personally met a surprisingly large number of people in the general public who think the government is attempting mind control, and at the very least reading their thoughts. These people are generally referred to as the “tin foil hat crowd”, due to the purported belief by some that wearing aluminum foil upon one’s noggin prevents transmission of information to and from the head by the government malefactors attempting to control our minds. (And I can tell you, it doesn’t work. They read your thoughts anyway. I know it’s cheating, but they do it anyway. More big government oppression.)
But what I’d like to know is this: If the government is reading our minds, where are the reviews? Shouldn’t there be some mind review section in the newspaper, like the book review section of the New York Times? Then conspiracy theorists and alien abductees and such could find out if their experiences and thoughts are compelling, or just trite and hackneyed. Then, if they wanted to, shall we say, improve their minds (or maybe become capable of imagining more layered, complex conspiracies and paranoia and stuff), they could take some classes on how to think more interestingly or coherently, and then they could go read the next review to find out if their minds are improving. (Naturally, some people would try to think intentionally fragmented and nonsensical thoughts, just to confuse the government, or else to see if anyone shows up to take them away, confirming their suspicions of their mind being read.)
Ah, I can just see the reviews of my thoughts now: “An incoherent mess without focus or clarity”, “A trite example of common smartassity suffused with elements of gauche kitsch”, “It would take a whole bottle of OxyClean to clean up this mess!”, “Dickens it ain’t!”, “Two thumb screws down!”, etc.
(BTW: What made me think of this is the fact that for the past few days, an unmarked white van has been parked directly outside of my apartment window, and I’ve always heard these tin foil hat-types say that whenever you see an unmarked white van, it’s the government doing surveillance on you. Wow, with everyone knowing about it, I’d think they’d use different colored vans; but hey, it’s the government, right? Maybe there are strict regulations about this sort of thing, and if they use a different kind of van, the evidence they get on you is inadmissible in court; or maybe they get a special deal on unmarked white vans if they buy them in bulk, so long as they promise not to paint them or anything. Who knows?)
